The Accidental Fascist

Is Donald Trump a fascist?

Not that it matters, but the answer is no.  Fascism, whatever one thinks one of it, implies an underlying ideology.  Trump doesn’t have one.

True fascists also have definite political goals.  Hitler was determined to restore Germany’s “place in the sun;” Putin wants to reverse the breakup of the Soviet Union, which he called “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century;” Xi is obsessed with making China the world’s pre-eminent economic power.  When they talk about making their countries great again, no matter how perverse their vision or brutal their methods, they mean it.

Trump does not.  For him, Make America Great Again is just a slogan, a way to entice admirers (suckers) into wildly cheering his rambling, abhorrent rhetoric, buying his growing variety of tawdry, overpriced merchandise, and, in the case of Evangelicals, worshiping him as messenger from God.  (It is difficult to write that final clause without being overwhelmed with the absurdity of it.)

For Trump, power is not a means to an end, a necessity in achieving political or economic goals, but rather simple ego gratification and, more than anything else, a vehicle to make money.

Even those true fascists most admire reveal the differences.  Hitler saw himself as Frederick the Great; Putin, Peter the Great; and Xi, Mao.  Each, for better or worse, built an empire.  Trump’s hero is legal assassin Roy Cohn, who only tore things down, mostly people.

The argument can be made, and is being made, that whether Trump is a fascist, a Nazi, or neither makes no difference because his impact on American democracy will be the same.  That is not entirely true as there are two key differences.

The first is competence and the ability to wield power successfully.  No one would argue that Hitler, Putin, Xi, Stalin, or Viktor Orban lacked the skill or political acumen to move their country in the direction they wanted, steamrolling dissent and forcing their policies on both government officials and the general population.  Trump, for all the bluster, has demonstrated a marked inability to achieve any of these. 

His attempted trade war did not bolster American manufacturing; his border wall was never built; Mexico did not help pay for American border security; he did leave office after his attempted coup failed spectacularly; his lawsuits to overturn the 2020 election failed; his party lost ground in 2018; and he lost a re-election bid in 2020.  (Imagine saying that about any of the others.)  Aside from a tax cut that favored the wealthy, his most spectacular achievements emanated from the Supreme Court, but even there he lost in a number of cases designed to keep him in power.

The second difference is how he mobilizes his followers.  Despite initially recruiting a talented group of subordinates, Trump could not frighten, bribe, or cajole them into serving him with blind loyalty, or any loyalty at all for that matter.  People such as John Bolton, Gary Cohn, and Rex Tillerson walked out in disgust—Tillerson calling him a moron—with no fear of retribution.  Afterwards, he was only able to assemble a team of non-talent toadies, but they lacked the skill or intelligence to successfully implement policy initiatives.  Even lower-level government bureaucrats refused his demands, sometimes dragging their feet, sometimes, as with Justice Department lawyers, ignoring him entirely.

He had better luck with elected officials, but there he had the advantage of using his popularity with rank-and-file conservatives (suckers again) to threaten an apostate with a primary challenge followed by exile to the horrors of making a living in the private sector.

While there are those in every fascist regime who sign on or stay on only for personal privilege, as Republican congresspeople and state officials have done with Trump, in most cases, its functionaries genuinely believe in the underlying vision of leader, part of which is the exaltation of the state, which they feel is under threat from both external and internal forces. 

Trump’s Republicans believe in nothing.  Well, they want to keep their cushy jobs but that’s about it.  If he favors a national abortion ban, they favor a national abortion ban; if he decides he wants to leave abortion to the states, they want to leave abortion to the states; if he favors mass deportations, they favor mass deportations; if he objects to a bipartisan border security bill, they object to a bipartisan border security bill; if he wants them to refuse to certify a free and fair election, they refuse to certify a free and fair election. 

There is neither consistency nor a through line. Trump, lacking anything he truly believes in, rules by whim, which makes it necessary for his fellow Republicans to spend a good deal of time ducking around corners to avoid giving idiotic sounding explanations for the shift in advocacy.  (Witness Mike Johnson’s having to tap dance past his blunder on the Chips Act in a contested congressional district that greatly benefited from it.)

This is not to say Trump poses no threat.  He does and a very grave one.  While he has no interest in building a new society, he is perfectly happy to tear down this one, all in pursuit of crass, personal satisfaction.  To achieve that, his tactics and those of actual fascists overlap.

Fighting fascism or even quasi-fascism is difficult.  One of its cornerstones is the thrust to gain as much power as possible and to quickly suppress opposition and dissent.  The more mature a fascist system becomes, the more effective it is in doing so. 

As such, the best way to stop would-be autocrats, fascist or not, is to get them early and prevent them from setting up mechanisms in government that will ensure both perpetuation of their rule and eliminate traditional means of creating an effective opposition.

Americans have the chance to do just that.

On November 5.